the tracks of train heartnet
by readerofasaph
Summary: Written for the 1fandom community on Livejournal: Fifty sentences following Train Heartnet's progression through the manga series.


30

This is the truth: when Chronos killed the pet cat it still had seven lives remaining; blood washes out with bleach and scrubbing and even guilt can be forgiven; but yourself, that is the thing that never goes away, that continually wants to resurrect inside of you.

11

The world unfolded like a path before your feet: you lived.

10

His concealed eye - the delicate bell that dangles at the edge of your neck - behind them lie the questions you do not ask each other, the things that can never be shared.

03

What can be shared, you share; strength added to strength multiplies.

27

Sweeping with a partner was not easy, at first; yet all the struggle has lain in the living, in the lack of solitude, in the fights over the laundry and the dishes and (not often, thanks be to Annette and whatever God lies out there) who gets to vacuum the home base after it gets too dusty even for two nomadic crime-fighting bachelors.

48

"It's not that I mind you drawing cartoon cats on my grenades," Sven says, "but in future could you replace the cap on the permanent marker _before it dries out_?"

45

You win your arguments by being childish; he wins his fights because he is grown-up – however, in some unimportant ways, you are the older one.

29

Somehow, he trusts you.

31

Being a sweeper is everything you never knew you wanted; as with so many other things, she was right about this.

33

Train has never asked himself if he was in love with Saya, because he knew he was not – but the memory of the possibility remains.

32

On starry nights too bright for cats to sleep, he is frustrated and grateful: grateful for the parts of his heart that do not ache - frustrated that they do not, and all the could-have-beens they symbolize.

36

Nights are for assassins and true felines; these days Train prefers to do his sweeping by day, in the light.

39

He'd stop playing with his targets if it weren't so much _fun_.

26

"_Like me, you smell of blood_," she thinks – and follows.

12

'Princess,' he calls her, and even before she reads Sleeping Beauty it feels like a compromise.

15

The ice creams he buys her are cold and delicious – but he did not buy her the first one, and perhaps that has made all the difference.

18

"You can't fly," Eve tells him one night in somebody's basement, surrounded by milk and canned tuna and bowls of instant ramen.

01

"Not at all," he agrees smilingly; this too, feels like utter defeat.

38

She'll play forever until she wins or changes into a woman.

21

"You'll never grow up, but that's nothing new," Sven pronounces, wielding a soup ladle as he stares at Train's three hundred paper planes and Eve's four hundred.

42

This was the stray cat's first and hardest lesson: in order to live the way you please, you must first discover what pleases you.

47

Being tied down, being weakened by other people – that is also part of freedom.

23

The only one who can master me is myself.

28

It was Chronos that taught him the boundaries of pride – to know exactly the limits of your strength, without underestimation.

02

That his ego can be provoked – that is the luxury of the unfettered soul, to permit yourself a weakness.

13

Rinslet thinks that Train is whimsical for the same reasons that she wears her beauty, like an accessory.

44

She finds it intriguing, this possibility of his being a kindred spirit; what makes him attractive is the difference – the humanity, the wildness that courses through him in places she cannot reach.

08

Trying to unravel Train is like a too-slow game of Pass the Parcel.

06

Strip away his layers and there is nothing beneath - mask upon mask upon disguise, and they are all truly part of the whole.

14

It was a disappointment when she realised she was not in love with him.

37

No Eraser, not even a Time Guardian, ever stops being fragile or human.

43

The milk was dull and opaque and seemed to curdle against his tongue; he took a slow sip and sloshed it around in his mouth, looking for a place to spit it out.

05

"I'll shoot you if you don't drink it down," said Zagienne, and Train swallowed too quickly; choked.

20

These days, he simply likes the taste of it.

16

He's never found any burden to match the weight of the first time he held Hades, cool orichalcon against naked hand.

17

"Why do you wield this weapon?" Sephiria asked, and the humanity in her face, as always, forced silence out of him.

49

They were never evil, they were never less than admirable; what it came down to was that he would live a life of his choosing, and they let him go free.

07

He follows no anthem, no philosophy, no leader; he will not be an apostle of anything.

35

The thing he regrets the most is Creed, but he did not regret it at the time; their respective darknesses have always been different, but when every shade and every colour so closely resembles black, it becomes difficult to distinguish one tint from another.

40

Animals are wild; it takes a human to go insane.

25

"You're so cute, Kuro-sama!" she says, eyes sparkling: the picture of callous innocence.

46

her breath smells of blood and flame.

41

He ducks to avoid her kiss, replies: "I'll protect you."

19

Train lacks Saya's gift for transforming lives – but he is the one here, and he will try.

50

He cannot see past the thing that Creed has become; he remembers, however, the thing that Train Heartnet used to be.

04

Tao and technology, orichalcon and air; do all these not serve merely to remind us that we are human?

09

He does not plan on regretting anything else.

24

"You're too easygoing," Sven tells him for the hundredth time, not disapprovingly; Train pretends to sleep on the couch.

34

Eve transforms her hair into golden knives, the unpaid bills pile up, and there is time and space to do anything in the world.

22

A stray cat roams free.


End file.
